


Paint Your Demons Red

by captainkilly



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Defenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 19:46:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12327627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Frank Castle tries to keep Karen Page at arm's length and out of danger. (Really, he does.)She has other ideas about what safety means.





	Paint Your Demons Red

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring side-sprinklings of my version of Micro, a few here-and-there pop culture references you'll likely recognise when you see them, and the ever-elusive backstory of Karen Page.

To her credit, she doesn't scream.

 

Karen Page's eyes widen in the dim light of the alleyway as she sees him standing there. Her gaze flicks to the gun he's now lowering fast before she fixes on his face and scowls in that typical stubborn way he thinks she may have just been born with.

 

“Frank?”

 

Her voice doesn't even waver. If anything, it's the steadiest he's ever heard it. She's usually all breathy whispers and jagged edges, but the steel in her eyes at present makes his insides quail.

 

He actually takes a step backwards when she scrambles to her feet and points a finger into his direction. “You get the _hell_ away from me. You hear me?” She sways on her feet, but he knows better than to try and steady her. She's several pounds of soaking wet fury rallying against his presence. “You can't just come back and do.. this.”

 

He catches her helpless gesture at the dead body that's inches away from her feet. Thinks he can almost taste the exasperation in the air as she lets out a shaky breath and folds her arms.

 

“Do what?” he challenges, the fight in him all the same as in her, and thinks he may yet have a death wish.

 

“You can't just act like you are back in New York.” She almost pouts before she purses her lips and lets out a soft hiss from between her teeth. “Like nothing has changed and like you're not three seconds away from getting arrested for murder again. You can't keep _doing_ that, Frank!” Her furious whisper lodges itself in his ears better than any song's tune ever could. “One of these days, I'm going to–”

 

“Going to what?”

 

“Forget it.”

 

"One of these days, you're going to do _what_? Going to write a story now?" His voice is sharper than he wants it to be. He thinks he may be several degrees of suicidal when her eyes narrow at him. His fingers tap the side of his pants once. Twice. It's a trigger-tap, staccato, like a marching beat, and he has not used this one since the last time he saw her. He's not sure why he's pushing this, out of all the things to say to Karen Page when she tumbles back into his life like this, but he's tired to the marrow of his bones and his skin feels too tight to live in. He almost sneers the words out as a reminder of why he really, really should not have taken the stand in court that day. "You gonna write about the big bad Punisher, back from the dead and twice as ugly?"

 

"That's not fair."

 

"I don't care," he says, even though he really does. Thinks it's easier to lie when her voice goes quiet like this and her eyes fix on him with all the blue intensity of a lightning strike. He can hear the electric currents in the air when she holds his gaze. Tastes the static on his tongue, buzzing and popping like the candies Junior used to love. Smells the ozone as she expels a breath that might have been angry in another life. Shakes his head as if to clear it. "You need to —"

 

"Don't!" she snaps, interrupting him mid-sentence, whirling her own sharp voice at him the way others wield a blade. "Save your warnings. Save your cautions. Save whatever the _hell_ it is you wanted to say to me just now."

 

He opens his mouth anyway, because he will never be done saying the things she wants him to save, even though there's a look in her eyes that could curdle milk. The set of her jaw makes his insides go all funny, as though he's five years old again getting caught sneaking cookies at the dog when he thought mom wasn't looking. He barely gets a syllable out — and he's not sure where that syllable would even go, because he doesn't know the end of his sentence — before she's snapping at him in fresh alarm that coats her tone with warning bells.

 

"Just save it, Frank!"

 

He raises his hands as if putting forth his surrender. Ducks his head in the next second when it doesn't look like her eyes are going to leave him alone. There is something that speaks of prison in his stance, something that spells out a submission that he does not want to contemplate, and any cautionary words he would have said are all escaping through the bars before he has any hopes of catching them on his tongue. "Okay," he says, resigning himself to being in the business of lying to her for a living, and hates himself for saying that one word just a little bit more.

 

Karen huffs out a breath as she hugs her own slender frame with both arms. It's a stance he recognises as defensive. More so when her eyes finally leave his face and begin to roam over their surroundings with well-practiced caution. She hunches in on herself when a honking car passes the alley they're standing in. He can't blame her. Shouldn't be surprised when her eyes land on the body at their feet and her shoulders straighten back again. Her brow knits together as she rakes a hand through her soaking wet hair. Her bag's still on the floor. One of her heels has snapped and lies forgotten near the dumpster, though you'd never know it from the way she draws herself up to her full height and takes a deliberate step forward now.

 

"What are you going to do with him?"

 

"Nothing. Nobody heard a damn thing."

 

"We can't just leave him!"

 

He eyes the body critically. "Pretty sure you can't see him from the street, ma'am," he grunts out. Takes a few steps back toward the street just to be sure. Isn't sure why he's putting in the effort to make sure this body is hidden when he sprawls the rest of the corpses he leaves out on messy displays for all the world to see, but there's something trembling in her voice that he thinks has the power to expand into a hurricane of noise. There's something inside of her that might break if he applies pressure. He considers himself to be many things, but he's not that kind of asshole just yet. Instead, he decides to shoot for reassurance. "Yeah, we're clear."

 

"The _fuck_ we are," she bites out.

 

Frank blinks at her. "Pick up your bag. Pick up the heel you lost in the struggle." He's talking to her as if she's a small child. As if she's Lisa, dragging her feet and getting distracted by everything in a five-mile radius. He is powerless to stop the shift in his own voice from cold remoteness to whatever the hell kind of distance he can still put between himself and this force of nature. "Change your shoes. Go have a cup of coffee."

 

"I'm not a _child_ , Frank!" Her voice edges on hysterical now, though it's mercifully still hushed instead of the full-on screech that lurks in the tightness of her mouth and the strain around her eyes. "Y-you just.. You just killed someone. Again."

 

"All due respect, ma'am, he was trying to assault you." He doesn't have to expand on that. He knows it wasn't a mugging, because her bag lay discarded on the floor. She was on the floor too, scrambling to get to that .380 of hers. Way he sees it, putting his bullet between the scumbag's eyes first was the least he could do. He can offer her that much. "Couldn't let him walk."

 

"And you just so happened to be in the area."

 

"That's right."

 

He's not lying now. He'd been camping out on the rooftop across the street when he'd spotted them. Him first, the little rat, skulking around in shadowy corners waiting for some next target to come along. Then her, struggling with her umbrella and her bag, blonde hair clinging to her from the heavy downpour, inattentive to her surroundings just for a moment too long. His attempt to refocus on the syndicate's moneyrunner had failed miserably. So had his attempt to stay on that rooftop and let Karen Page solve her own problems.

 

Her hand had been a hair's breadth away from her gun when he had taken the shot. Just the one clean shot and nothing more. Muted by a silencer he'd tacked on in a hurry. She wouldn't have gone for that. There's too much thought in that gun of hers. Too much comfort. Nah. Karen Page would have plugged the scumbag until her clip was empty.

 

"Why are you here, Frank?"

 

She sounds as tired as he feels. It's the kind of exhaustion not even a straight IV-line to a barrel full of coffee can cure.

 

He takes a second too long to answer. She huffs out an impatient breath before turning abruptly on her heel. His hand reaches for her just a second too late. She slips through his fingers. He withdraws his hand. Hugs his own body with it instead, huffing out a slow breath of his own as he takes in her methodic movements.

 

He's back in that diner before he knows it. Sitting across from her. She's fidgeting and he's trying to crack a joke to set her at ease. Her eyes keep darting everywhere until they settle on him. He almost wishes they didn't. She isn't meant to trust him that much. Isn't sure what he'd have to do to lose that trust. Thinks he's going to find out. His mind scrambles the diner with a jailhouse meeting room. Scrambles it with an empty dinnertable. Scrambles it with a hospital bed and the blues of its walls being somehow less bright than her eyes.

 

His mind may be a fucked-up mess, but he remembers her admission that maybe training a gun on him without flinching wasn't her first rodeo.

 

He's sure of that now that he observes her switch out her heels for flat shoes she somehow managed to stow away in her bag. Even more sure of it when she turns her phone's flashlight on and hovers above the body critically, eyeballing the ground and the man's bloodied face with the practiced ease of someone trying to cover all their tracks. Watches her tie her hair back with a clip and scrub blood spatters off her skin with some kind of cleansing wipe she folds back into her bag when she's done.

 

He barely trusts his voice, but the set of her shoulders is so rigid that he can't help but venture out onto the ledge of everything that threatens to crumble. “We should go,” he offers. “There is a 24-hour coffee place not two blocks away from here.” He doesn't need to explain how he knows this. Thinks she knows the place he means when her shoulders relax just a fraction. Or maybe it's just him making a fool of himself that has her muscles quit their fight against the world. “I'll walk you there, ma'am.”

 

Her smile is brittle, but it is there.

 

Blonde hair brushes his bare skin as she actually loops her arm through his the second they exit the alley. He almost comes to a halt at her touch. Goosebumps rise to the surface unbidden where her fingertips meet the hairs on his arm. He almost withdraws from her. Thinks better of it the next second when her hand tightens and a small tremor runs through her fingers.

 

They almost look like a normal couple walking down the block in the pouring rain. She's opened her umbrella back up and he snorts out a most undignified half-laugh when he realises the damn thing is adorned with pink hearts. Even in the dim light, he can see matching pink flush her cheeks for a moment when she realises the same. He ducks under her umbrella more fully when they are about to pass by a group of people.

 

This woman on his arm is the best line of defense he's got. That fact should scare him, but it's hard to feel anything but his own heartbeat getting jammed in his throat when she leans in closer and rests her cheek against his shoulder briefly. He almost forgets that he promised her coffee when she sighs so softly he thinks he must have misheard it. His hand reaches out and clutches at the umbrella's handle half a second later.

 

The Punisher is holding a heart-adorned umbrella aloft – gripping onto it for dear life, in fact – in the biggest downpour this city's seen in ages. It's the best disguise he's had since that time he dug himself into the sand in Afghanistan and wound up erupting back out of it like one of the sandworms of _Dune_. The memory makes him chuckle.

 

She looks askance at him with questions in her eyes. He resorts to a low-voiced retelling of it in the next breath, laying out the foreign land in just a few well-chosen words and speaking of the scents of midnight in one of the oldest places he's ever set foot in. He talks about the desert as though it's a living entity. Speaks of it with more reverence than he reserves for most of the living these days.

 

They arrive at the coffee place just as she bursts out laughing at his demonstration of how exactly he put the fear of god into two Afghan army deserters and a lone camel. He ducks his head and hides a smile when she starts to share a story in turn about her brother burying himself under a pile of leaves and getting attacked by a pigeon. Her voice inexplicably halts on some words, but then she says the name _Kevin_ and her face contorts into something terrible he balks at seeing.

 

His life around Karen Page is always built of _almost_ , except when her eyes fill with tears and her breath hitches just as they enter the building. He reaches for her hand once he's tucked the umbrella under his arm. Gives it a reassuring squeeze before releasing it again. She inhales a shaky breath behind his back as he strides over to the booth in the far-end corner opposite the door.

 

“You, uh, you still take it black?” he asks, observing the rather complicated menu that adorns the blackboard behind the counter warily. Elects to ignore the fact that she's dabbing at her eyes with her jacket's sleeve. “None of that fancy crap that's three-quarters sugar and one-quarter pretentiousness, right?”

 

She lets out a shaky laugh. “None of that,” she affirms. He's glad to see the corners of her mouth lift higher again, even when she's perched on the edge of the bench and eyeing the cherry pie on the counter more than she's looking at him. “I just.. I didn't think we'd sit like this again.”

 

He grunts out a sound that he hopes she'll take as agreement. Never expects anything from her at all after all the shit he's done. He fidgets on the bench when her eyes finally slide over to meet his. There is nothing but open curiosity in them and he wants to reach over and shout it out of her if it means that she will be safer for it. Thinks it ridiculous in the next breath, because Karen Page has never been _safe_. She's forever a marching band of war and peace looping into rollercoasters he does not comprehend but wants to bear witness to all the same. He lowers his gaze when her eyes harden.

 

“You still haven't told me why you're here. Why now.”

 

He doesn't know which version of the truth to tell her at first, jumbled in his brain as it is and complicated as it seems. He orders coffee from the waitress first, grateful for the bubblegum-chewing interruption, and decides to add two slices of cherry pie to his order on a whim. Smirks when her foot collides with his leg none-too-gently under the table.

 

“Schoonover,” he finally rumbles, and watches the shutters come tumbling down behind her eyes in her last vestige of self-protection. He shakes his head, already convinced he's lost her. Keeps going anyway, because her foot's still on his leg and her hand comes to rest not an inch away from his. “He said somethin', made me think.”

 

“You still killed him.”

 

It's not a question. He knows she heard the shot. Knows he'd reverse almost everything about that night if he could. Knows he'd listen now to what he could not, did not, _dared_ not hear back then. His breath halts in his throat for a moment. The words don't come right in his head, as though there are parts missing that should matter, but if he doesn't say something now she will be that much further away.

 

“Yes, I did.” He huffs out a breath. “He said somethin' about the sting op being more than that. Said the word Kandahar.”

 

“Afghanistan? What of it?”

 

He cannot tell her everything. He reminds himself of it even when the words begin to tumble out of his mouth of their own volition. He doesn't have the full story himself yet, searching for clues in the city as he is, but what he has is enough to make her lean back on the bench and shrug out of her jacket as though she plans on being here all night. She's got him spilling government secrets as though he hasn't been trained to withstand most forms of interrogation. (He's got half a mind to tip the Marines off about using Karen Page as a weapon, because those sky-blue eyes are impossible to spill a lie to.)

 

He only halts his speech when he hears the waitress approach, moving on abruptly into a side-comment about _Dune_ 's sandworms that makes her eyes light up. “I read all those books, not just the first one,” she confesses when he dares not ask why she looks happy. “Still repeat the mantra to myself some days. Fear is the mind-killer..”

 

“Fear is the little death,” he replies, cradling the coffee mug that's set in front of him as though it's a new lifeline. “I remember that. Thought of that book almost every day when I was overseas. The sand sometimes makes you see things. You'd almost know where all the stories about the _edimmu_ come from.” At her frown, he adds an explanation. “Ghosts of those who weren't buried properly, according to their local legends.”

 

She attacks the cherry pie as soon as it's set in front of her. Smiles up at the waitress and tells the woman to keep the coffee coming. Isn't surprised when the disinterested girl simply places the coffeepot in front of them about a minute later. Hedges them back on-topic with a question about who provided him with the information about the covert ops that seem to tie in with the reasons why he should be buried six feet under with the rest of his family.

 

“A friend,” he replies, even when that's not strictly the truth. Micro is many things at many times, but calling the man a friend may be stretching it. “He is good at uncovering what people think should be hidden.”

 

“A friend?” She echoes it back at him almost wonderingly. “I didn't think you had any.”

 

“Ouch.” He finds himself chuckling as he says it, shaking his head at her flippant response. He almost offers to her that she is his friend, even when the word spins out of control in his brain and doesn't seem to think it suits what she is to him at all. He closes his eyes briefly in annoyance at how often his brain seems to fight him on the most basic things of late. “Friend might be a big word for him,” he confesses when it seems like his brain has given up on any other avenue of conversation, “but he didn't alert authorities.”

 

She jabs her fork into his general direction as though she is using it as additional punctuation in her sentences. “You have low standards. The fact that you have met another fugitive who's avoiding the cops doesn't mean he's got your best interests at heart.” She smiles wryly when he makes a noise of half-hearted protest at her (correct) assumption. “Anyone who doesn't have something to hide or doesn't approve of your methods would call the cops on you in a heartbeat. The fact that you're omitting his name tells me the rest.”

 

He elects to dig into his own slice of cherry pie instead of replying to her. She's always been too inquisitive for her own good. Always been three strides ahead of him in everything, connecting the dots on things he didn't even know were dots in the first place, leaving the door ajar for him even when he brings nothing but trouble to her doorstep.

 

Karen Page is someone he needs to stay away from. He swallows thickly. Almost chokes on the crumbs that seem to lodge themselves in his throat. His eyes are burning and he honestly tries not to look at her now. Not when she's smiling this brightly, not while the happy humming noise she makes at the food lodges itself in his ears, not when her foot is still resting against his leg with more comfort than she should ever feel around him.

 

It's this that makes him decide to be a piece of shit to her.

 

“You, uh, you hear from the counselor at all? Nelson, I mean.”

 

“Sometimes.” Her voice almost hitches on the word. He looks up to find her studiously avoiding his gaze. “We're.. not around each other much.” She finishes the sentence rather lamely, but is sharp enough to realise he didn't just ask because he's curious about how Foggy Nelson is doing. “Why?”

 

“Just a case. Could use a second opinion.” He shrugs. Doesn't volunteer anything else about that. “He, uh, seems to be doing all right. Since Murdock, I mean.”

 

“Since Murdock _what_ , Frank?”

 

She snaps the words at him, voice catching on the man's last name, tone getting so frosty he thinks she has pulled all her words out of a bucket of ice before speaking them. He almost falters.

 

Almost.

 

“Since he died.”

 

There's a sharp intake of breath. Then, she sets her coffee cup down with so much force that the liquid spills all over the table. Gone is her foot on his leg. Gone is her hand resting next to his. Gone is any semblance of friendly conversation. He steels himself against her rage.

 

“You're such an asshole.”

 

Her voice is flat. Her mouth is drawn in a tight line. Her eyes are colder than he's ever seen them. He didn't know ice could burn, embroiled in hot sand's warfare as he's always been, but he thinks he feels it now when the blue of her gaze lands on him. He knows her well enough to know she's hurt. Knows it from the sharp breath she whistles out. Knows it from the way her shoulders hunch forward, as though she wants to do nothing more than slump over the table. Knows it from the way her fingers tremble before her nails dig into the tabletop.

 

“You got that right,” he tells her, echoing a long-ago conversation with her. “You need to go. Get away from all this.” His eyes burn. His fingers clench around his own cup of coffee. “Get away from me.”

 

She leans back against the bench. Lets out a long, exasperated-sounding breath. Her eyes are distant, staring at a faraway point in the outside rain. He doesn't know why she's not leaving. Why somehow dragging Murdock into the conversation in the worst way possible isn't enough to make her close the door on him. She just sits there, hand tapping out a restless pattern on the tabletop, and stays.

 

Her foot wedges itself between his feet. He closes his eyes.

 

“It's not going to work, you know.” Her voice is so quiet he has to strain to hear her. Has to lean in across the table to make out the words rather than any kind of jumbled-together mess. Her gaze snaps back to his. Blue traps his dark and holds it captive. “You, pushing me away. Not again.”

 

“Ma'am..”

 

“Don't you _ma'am_ me.” She sounds more tired than he's ever heard her. “Goddamn it, Frank. If you want to leave, then leave. Just don't pull this shit on me.” A sigh. A confession. “I'm so tired of everybody's bullshit.”

 

He stays.

 

God help him, he stays.

 

*****

 

“We _really_ need to stop meeting like this.”

 

He looks down at her and finds himself agreeing with her statement right away. Her hands are slick with blood. Her blonde hair is already tainted with it, the ends curling away into red, but she rakes a hand through it impatiently and makes it so much worse.

 

“Are you hurt?”

 

He has to know. Tells himself it's just logical to inquire after her wellbeing, even when she's already scoffing at him and closing herself off from him.

 

“Blood's not mine.” She says it quietly, void of pride, and gestures at the body in the far-end corner. “I got him before you did.”

 

That would explain why the man had slumped against the far-end wall before Frank had even gotten a shot in. Even from this distance, he can make out the large puddle of blood the man's half-seated in. Can make out the hilt of the knife, buried deep in the man's neck as it is, and the few wounds on his torso. Not a pretty way to go. Bullets are faster.

 

“You still got your .380?”

 

“Yeah. Just.. didn't have the time to grab it.” She sounds none-too-happy about that fact. “He came at me the second I walked through the door. Brandishing that knife. I just.. reacted.” She sounds a little too clinical. A little too closed-off. He frowns when she smiles wryly. “I think he may have been waiting for you. Lucky you didn't hit me.”

 

“I recognised you.” He scrapes his throat. “When I walked in.”

 

“More like barged in,” she mutters.

 

“What's that? You arguing language with me now, ma'am?” He takes care to keep his voice light, with a long-lost teasing note coming to the foreground for a second. “Don't approve of the way I walk into a room, do you?”

 

Her lips curve upward slightly, her head tilts back, and out comes the first real laugh he's heard from her in a long time. He finds the corner of his own mouth tugging upward in response, for just a moment, though he masks most of his amusement by ducking his head and helping her to her feet.

 

His phone jingles out an obnoxious rendition of _We Didn't Start The Fire_ right as he wants to go take a second look in the other room he passed through on the way here. He closes his eyes. Mentally counts to ten. Every damn day, he curses the fact that he seems to have misplaced the last earpiece Micro gave him.

 

“What?” He clips the word into the phone, cursing softly under his breath at the interruption. “I'm in the middle of–”

 

Micro's voice lodges itself in his ear with rapidfire pacing akin to one of Frank's semi-automatics. “I've got two different crews converging on your location and only one escape route out of bizarroville, do you want to hear details as you move or shall I just shut up and let you be a sitting duck?”

 

“Details,” he grunts into the phone, taking Karen by the arm and grabbing a hold of the bag she dropped at the same time. Hands her the bag as he directs his next words at her. “Ma'am, we gotta run. Do as I say, okay?” He softens his voice when her face contorts into the beginning of an argument. “Danger close.”

 

“Who the fuck are you talking to?”

 

“Never you mind,” he tells Micro sourly, growling the words into the phone. “Don't make me a sitting duck.”

 

To the man's credit, he knows how to avert a crisis. Frank's relatively sure that Micro is looking at blueprints of the building, because he makes them take several turns that would confuse anyone else. He walks down the corridors at a brisk pace, listening to the man ramble out instructions over the phone, while Karen follows in his footsteps. She's taken the .380 out of her bag. He doesn't need to tell her to keep it at the ready.

 

Dimly, he wonders when he began to trust Karen Page enough to have her watch his back in a crisis. Supposes it's only a good thing when her long legs match him stride for stride and they clear the building with ease. He'll rest easy when they're out of danger.

 

“Not your car,” he grunts out when she wants to make a beeline for her silver vehicle the second they're outside. “Not in the clear. Got a van.”

 

She eyes him warily. “A van,” she echoes. A frown mars her face. “A murder van.”

 

“It's not a murder van,” he grounds out patiently.

 

“Every van's a murder van, unless they deliver food.”

 

Despite her flippant dismissal, she follows him toward the far end of the alleyway. Doesn't even complain when she has to climb a short fence to get to the other side. It's only now that he registers he no longer hears the click-click-click of her heels on the floor. Blinks at the reappearance of flat shoes.

 

There's shouting behind his back. The sound of telltale clicks and slides. He reaches out. Grabs her by the arm and steers her away from open view until they're almost flat against the wall. It doesn't stop their pursuers from firing the first shots.

 

He smiles grimly. Moves in front of Karen until he shields her entirely from their view. Pushes at her to keep walking as he takes aim. Huffs out a breath and calculates the first four shots in the blink of an eye. Combat trained him for that much. Routine does the rest. His fingers unerringly find the trigger.

 

He hears Karen fire off three shots in a row just as the sound of screeching tires reaches his ears. “Get to the van!” he instructs, voice low, moving ever-closer toward her. Is relieved to find she dropped two of their pursuers that came from the left. Finishes the job she started without hesitation. “Get in, get in.”

 

“You are stressing me the hell out!” shouts Micro from behind the steering wheel, gesturing at Frank to please jump inside now that Karen's seated in the back of the van already. “I leave you alone for _ten minutes_ , and what do I get?”

 

Frank slides two guns into the van before hopping into it himself. “More information?” he volunteers, waving the usb-sticks he lifted off the desks in the man's face for a moment. He grimaces when Micro's idea of driving seems to include sharp turns and swerves that he hasn't felt since driving through Afghanistan in a Humvee that had seen better days. “Stop complaining.”

 

“I'll stop complaining once they stop shooting!”

 

He finds it hard to argue with that when they're getting shot at. Curses rapidly when he realises he didn't pack for a fullblown shoot-out. This was meant to be a quick in-and-out, more recon than attack, but apparently their latest enemies have other ideas.

 

Something whizzes past their window and embeds itself in a nearby car. He blinks in confusion when he's not able to categorise the sound as a known bullet. Steels himself against the floor of the van and grabs hold of one of his guns again. Whatever it is, they can take it.

 

The other occupants of the van seem to disagree with him on that.

 

“Swerve, swerve!” shrieks Karen, already covering her ears and head with her hands. “Keep driving!”

 

“Jeez, lady, I wasn't planning on stop–”

 

Whatever Micro wanted to bite out in reply doesn't fully land out in understandable words. Frank hunches in on himself, suddenly understanding why Karen hit the floor of the van seconds before.

 

The noise outside is _deafening_. The large _BOOM!_ that shakes the van's windows overpowers the sound of rapid gunfire.

 

He hits the floor next to her when the outside lights up in flames. Cradles her head in his hands, pulls her close, says a quiet prayer he hasn't used since the war. _Father guide me Mother protect me Spirit watch over me_ washes over him like a mantra, lodges in his skull, drowns out _one batch two batch_ because they're back in war and the world finally stopped making sense.

 

He peers over the front seat in an attempt to have it make sense again.

 

“What in the fucking hell was _that_?” Micro's shrieking at top volume behind the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a collision with a lamppost as he swerves around burning vehicles. He floors the gas pedal, all the while hammering away on the car horn in a wild attempt to chase other vehicles off the street before him. He's only mildly successful at that. “What the _fuck_ kind of bullet does _that_ kind of damage?”

 

Frank chances another look at the man's driving trajectory. Relinquishes his hold on Karen now that the street before them looks relatively clear of danger. Most of the noise seems to centre itself at the van's back. Surprisingly enough, the noise seems to move further away from them. It's as if their pursuers have already given up the chase.

 

“Judas bullet,” offers Karen in reply to Micro's question, sounding mildly queasy now that Micro's swerving back and forth between lanes at top speed. “Prototype made of alien weaponry, designed to drill into whatever it hits, detonates after first contact. Just one sells at a six-digit figure.”

 

“You telling me that was worth six digits back there?” Micro whistles softly under his breath as he ducks and weaves in and out of traffic expertly. “Damn. Someone must really want us dead.”

 

“Gives a whole new meaning to blowing your money, right?” Karen climbs onto the passenger's seat with more elegance than anyone in a cramped space is meant to possess. She glances at the side mirror. “Looks like they're dealing with the debris and chaos they created for now. Could mean we're in the clear.”

 

“Not holding my damn breath. I'm David, by the way.”

 

“Karen.”

 

Micro's laughing eyes turn to Frank. “Shit, man, I thought you didn't have any friends!”

 

“That's what I said!” Karen sounds just a little bit smug, like a cat eyeing a particularly fat canary. She half-turns to Frank, eyes alight and face split into a wide grin. “I told you so!”

 

He ducks his head and tries to hide a smile as reporter and hacker seem perfectly content to discuss Frank's lack of friends between them. Micro's driving gets less erratic the faster away from trouble he speeds, while Karen keeps throwing glances in the side mirror and interjecting helpful directions. He stretches out in the back of the van for a moment, parked between Micro's tech equipment as he is, and lets out a breath of quiet relief.

 

He closes his eyes, voices of the only two people he trusts like background noise in his ears, and wills his mind to stop going to war.

 

*****

 

Despite Micro's various complaints about needing to stop bringing home strays, Karen is introduced to the man's hideout just as the sun starts to rise. She does not comment on the rather sorry state of it. Just sets her bag down on the nearest available chair, shrugs her coat off, and walks over to the many computers and technical equipment that litter every square inch of free space in the room. He blinks at the ease with which she fits into this new place.

 

“Coffee or tea?”

 

“Coffee please,” she responds happily to Micro's question. Leans in to get a closer look at one of his screens. “Why are you monitoring that many security cameras around the city?”

 

“I like having eyes and ears in important places. Helps me sleep at night. You a coffee purist like this guy here?”

 

Upon Karen's nod, Micro disappears into the small side-room he keeps as a makeshift kitchen. The space is barely big enough to move around in, but somehow the man has managed to wedge a few chairs and a table in there as well.

 

“Best to go get your coffee yourself,” he says, scraping his throat as he observes her going around from monitor to monitor. The man's given name feels foreign on his tongue. “David tends to forget to actually give it to you.”

 

“I heard that!”

 

Karen smiles weakly at the man's shout. It's a tired smile that doesn't reach her eyes at all. His brow knits together as he observes her. She doesn't appear to be hurt, but there's blood on her everywhere he looks and her hair's taken on a reddish shine rather than the spun gold he knows it to be made of. Her arms hug her sides as she moves past him into the cramped kitchen.

 

He treads in her footsteps and wishes he brought more to her life than ruin.

 

*****

“Don't you drink coffee?”

 

“Not before 10pm.” Micro smiles at Karen, who's observing him warily from the seat she's perched on. “My wife's orders.”

 

“You've got a wife?”

 

“Sarah.” The man nods. Takes a long sip of his tea. “She always says that I'm particularly insufferable when I drink coffee during the day.”

 

“Micro here wouldn't know good coffee if it hit him in the face, though,” remarks Frank, wrinkling his nose at the weak swill in his cup.

 

“Micro? _The_ Micro?”

 

Frank blinks. Groans as he realises he's used the man's nickname out loud. Karen looks like Christmas just came early, but he's far too tired for a round of twenty questions with one of the nosiest troublemakers he's ever met. Decides to shoot for clarification. “What?”

 

Karen never even takes her eyes off of Micro. “You're with that hacker collective,” she says. “The Rising Tide.”

 

He closes his eyes. Karen doesn't sound like she's asking, but rather like she's making a statement even Micro won't be able to avoid affirming. He's not sure how the woman knows of the hacker group with such certainty that she can even identify Micro as one of its members. “I did _not_ tell her that,” he says, needing the man to understand that Karen's pile of trouble is bigger than just the Punisher any day of the week. “Don't know where she got that from.”

 

“No, but you just confirmed all of it.” Micro's voice is absolutely deadpan and flattens further the more he speaks. “Yes, I'm Rising Tide. Don't know about being _The_ anything,” he says, making air quotes around 'the' as though he does not quite believe that himself, “but Micro's the name I go by.”

 

“Did you know Silver?”

 

Frank frowns as her voice goes quieter than he's ever heard it. There's a tremble in her fingers that she does her best to still by wrapping both hands tightly around the coffee cup. She avoids eye contact with both of them, choosing to focus on the hot liquid instead.

 

“Oh, absolutely! One of the good guys for sure.” Micro's answer is surprisingly candid for a man who likes to play all his cards so close to his chest that Frank's quite sure he's never even seen the man's full deck. The curly-haired hacker sinks down on the chair across from Karen and fixes her with his most unnerving stare. “Now.. where did you get that name?”

 

“He looked up to you.” Karen's words are wisps of air, trembling out into the makeshift kitchen's quiet tremulously. Her gaze is somewhere far away from here, locked onto something in the distance neither man can see, and her eyes glisten in the light. She scrapes her throat. “My brother. He, uh.. He was Silver.”

 

“Fuck me,” breathes Micro, closing his bright eyes for a moment when her unseeing gaze slides over him. “I'm sorry, I.. I should have done something. More than what I did.”

 

“Nothing anyone could have done.” She laughs it into the space between them, eyes haunted, lips curved downward, fingers straining around the cup. “He was marked for death the second he got that information. He knew it, too. Left a trail of breadcrumbs for me to find.” She scrapes her throat again, blinks away tears, tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear the way he's seen her do countless times. Karen Page is good at pulling herself back together. A little _too_ good. “I, uh, I never found the people responsible. Left Vermont because I couldn't look his pictures in the eye anymore.”

 

“He only ever mentioned a sister. Never any other family. Nothin' personal, mind. Not your name or anything. Just called you Gold. Said you were the best thing on his side and the worst thing in a fight. I think you did right by him.”

 

Her chair screeches on the floor as Karen rises to her feet abruptly. Her cup almost breaks when she sets it down with more force than necessary. “I need to go clean up,” she says. Her hands rub her arms up and down as she speaks. “Get the blood off. Thanks for the coffee.”

 

Just like that, she walks out of the room.

 

He makes to follow her. He's not sure he likes the look he saw in her eyes, or the way she carried herself out the door. Something dark lurks in her gaze, something ruinous threatens her composure, and he can't sit by and let it rage. He's never been good at leaving her alone.

 

A strong hand on his arm halts him in his tracks. “Think about it.” Micro's voice is low in warning, urgent even, though the man's eyes are fixed on the doorway as well. “There's more loss there than you know about. She'll need some time to herself. Give her that.”

 

He hates it when Micro makes sense. Hates watching an upset woman walk away just a little bit more.

 

“Hands off.”

 

“Let her go.” Micro's jaw is set to the stubborn look he reserves for worst case scenarios. The man's hand clamps down even harder on his arm and presses into it until the skin goes white under his fingertips. “I don't know her like you do, but seems to me she doesn't wanna be with people right now.”

 

He huffs out a breath. “I'm not people,” he says quietly, prying Micro's fingers off his arm one by one. Voices the one thing he tries to hold on to, even when she's just in the next room and her half-full coffee cup is still sitting on the table before him. “I'm already dead to her.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Micro raises his hands and backs away from him slowly. Slings his teabag back into his mug and putters around the counter for more hot water. Frank takes that as an invitation to leave, even when the man's still muttering inanities under his breath. Micro shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye, piercingly bright and just as blue as Karen's sky-toned gaze, before sniping out a comment that sounds almost admiring. “Did anyone ever tell you you're fucking weird, man?”

 

*****

 

Frank Castle might be a bit weird, but he is not an idiot.

 

He tries to remind himself of that when his feet almost refuse to take him to the door of the bathroom. She has left it partially ajar, so it is not like he is intruding. Surely she would have closed the door if she really wanted to be alone. He lets out a soft sigh at the way his mind goes round in circles. He's been having more of these spirals lately. More of these yes-no-maybe-down-we-go spirals that don't bode well for his sanity or coherency.

 

She looks like she's spiralling, too. He can see her in the mirror, staring at her reflection, absentmindedly scratching at some of the blood that's lodged itself on the side of her neck. Her eyes are far away, haunted by ghosts he doesn't know, swamped with memories he doesn't dare touch. He doesn't know how to ask if she's okay. Doesn't know what he'd do if she'd say she's not.

 

He is many things, but never a coward.

 

His hand finds the door and pushes it ajar a little more. If he didn't know the woman before him so well, he would have missed the minuscule drop of her shoulders that signifies she's aware of his arrival. He takes it as invitation to step inside. Nudges the door to an almost-close.

 

“Hey,” he breathes, not daring to offer her anything else.

 

“Hey.” She echoes the word back at him slowly, still staring into the mirror as though she can see something other than just herself reflected back at her. “I was just.. cleaning up.”

 

“Need a hand?”

 

His casual offer finally has her turning her gaze away from her reflection. She bites her lip as she stares at him. Her eyes are blown wide like a deer's when caught in headlights. For a moment, grave and terrible, he thinks she means to turn him away.

 

“I'd like that,” she says, then, and holds out the washcloth she had previously clutched tightly in her fist. “I've been scrubbing my neck for the past five minutes. Could use some help with it.”

 

He takes the proffered cloth from her readily. “You're freezing,” he murmurs when her cold fingers graze his for a moment. Micro's place isn't the warmest, but the ice in her skin seems to be born of something else entirely. He knows he doesn't like that. Squeezes her fingers gently in an attempt to bring some warmth back in. “You gotta stay warm.”

 

She looks as though she wants to argue that she's known worse than this current cold. Her lips purse for a moment, her eyes narrow, and she tucks some of her bloodied hair behind her ear as she stares at him. He busies himself with soaking the washcloth through again, careful not to meet her eyes even when he feels her eyes never leave him. He's stupidly grateful when she merely lets out a breath and perches herself on the chair Micro keeps as a clothing rack instead of countering his words with something or other.

 

It is as though her strength leaves her the moment he goes to his knees before her. She hunches in on herself when he takes her hand. Slumps slightly in the seat when the washcloth brushes over her skin and slowly lets the blood fade away. She looks strung-out. Worn. World-weary, though her eyes glitter in the dim light and her gaze still fixes on him the way it always does.

 

He's used to her by now. Knows this to be fact when the tremble of her hand and her sharper intake of breath are enough to alert him to the bruises on her knuckles and wrists. He presses down on them gently. Scrubs the blood off despite the way she winces at his touch.

 

“I only had bruises like this once before,” she remarks wonderingly, staring at the darkened blue and angry red that mar her skin. “Fitting I should have them now.”

 

“What's that?”

 

“I had them after my brother died. Almost broke my hand when I punched the walls of his bedroom.” She sounds distant, still, and he jabs at her skin a little more harshly than usual in a last-ditch effort to ground her. She hisses at him in discomfort. Shifts on her seat. “Kevin was always.. damage control. I used to get mad about every little thing.”

 

“You still do,” he offers, smiling lopsidedly at her for a moment.

 

“I suppose I do.” She smiles back and her eyes steady into something that feels tangible in this moment again. He breathes out a sigh of relief he hopes she won't catch. “Do you want to know what happened?”

 

“Only if you're offering.”

 

His reply is so immediate that she blinks rapidly at him. He knows she's good at pushing past grief. Has made him set aside his enough to make him focus, make him sharp, make him smart. He doesn't want to push her as she does him. Doesn't think it'd be fair to, not when her voice hitches on every other word in a way that tells him she's never said any of it out loud.

 

“There are five different autopsy reports out there. Five different versions of what happened.” She begins anyway, haltingly, plunging into the middle of a story he can tell she's forgotten the beginning of. Isn't sure she already knows how it ends. “Official record is that Kevin lost control of the car. Bullshit. My brother was one of the best drivers. He'd even taken some of those courses, you know, where they teach you how to steer in extreme circumstances?”

 

He nods at her explanation. “Official record doesn't make sense,” he agrees.

 

“Unofficially, he was executed. My brother was Rising Tide, like Micro. He'd discovered something in government records he wasn't meant to see. Didn't cover his tracks enough.” She almost withdraws from him when he keeps cleaning her skin until the blood fades from it. He knows she thinks she's got red all over her, coated and cloaked and immersed in it, locked in the cage inside her like some rabid animal, but he knows better than that. Wants to make her see better than that. “He was young. Stupid. Maybe even a little arrogant. But he was my little brother. He was..”

 

He sets the washcloth aside on the edge of the sink. His hands fold around hers when an unholy noise of grief bursts forth from her lungs and collapses into the room all around him. He wedges the door shut with his foot as she begins to sob, ugly-sounding cries mingling with held breaths, tears trickling down onto his skin as he tightens his hold on her, her despair curling around the shushing murmurs that escape his lips.

 

“He was loved,” he says, over and over, and finds his own voice hitching on the last word. He knows grief like this. Knows what it's like to live with guilt so big you can't see the end of it. Knows how it feels to want to lay down your own life in exchange for one more day spent in their presence. “You loved him. He loved you. He was good.”

 

“He was,” she chokes out, voice trembling on the past tense. “And I failed him.”

 

“The world failed him. That wasn't you.”

 

Her hands withdraw from him and brush the tears off her cheeks almost matter-of-factly. Her motions are clipped instead of graceful. Her eyes refuse to meet his. “I as good as failed him,” she says, sounding more tired than the years of her life should allow her to, “and the people who killed him are still there. Somewhere. I want to..”

 

She doesn't have to finish the sentence. He thinks he knows the thought when her hands twist in mid-air, curl into fists, claw at the world around them in sharp gestures. He sees the same thought in the mirror every time he dares glance in it. Sees it staring back at him, threatening to claim him even in his rare moments of fleeting peace.

 

“You will,” he promises her.

 

Thinks it wouldn't change a damn about her. Thinks it creates peace inside her to believe that she can. Thinks he's got nothing else to offer her but this momentary acquiescence to her own darkness.

 

She gazes back at him, unafraid.

 

*****

 

He's in his third week of lying low at Micro's, following a narrow escape from Homeland Security, when the man takes one look at his monitor and murmurs something about a visitor. Frank doesn't need to look at the screen to know who it is. There's only one other person who knows about this space.

 

What he doesn't fathom is why she is here at all.

 

Karen looks exhausted when she steps into the room. He frowns as he takes in the dark circles under her eyes, her messy hair, the bag in her hands, and her chewed-on lip. Frowns even more when Micro closes the door behind her and takes her jacket as though she will stay for a good deal longer than a quick visit alone.

 

He wants to tell the man 'no'. Wants to tell him to keep Karen Page as far away from their brand of vigilante justice as possible. Wants to refuse her from walking into his life the way she always does, trouble nipping at her heels all the way, but finds himself powerless to change anything about that.

 

Instead, he just sits and stares.

 

“Right. I'll go put the kettle on, then.” Micro sounds as though he's already decided Karen is staying, even when his gaze shifts away from Frank's best nonverbal attempts to drill some sense into him. He takes the reporter's bag without comment and slings it over his shoulder with all the casual ease of a man used to carrying a woman's things. Frank curses softly under his breath. “You two just.. talk. Or something. Whatever it is you two do when I'm not around.” Only Micro's dry tone prevents his words from tilting into full-scale innuendo. “I'll be in the kitchen, guarding the knives.”

 

Frank almost rolls his eyes at the man. Rubs his eyes when it becomes clear the man really intends to leave him alone with the rather harrassed-looking reporter. He's pretty sure this is not how his days were meant to go.

 

He needs more coffee.

 

“I think Micro believes we're always on the verge of killing each other.” In a way, her words are the extension of an olive branch with the way her smile wraps around them. It's a brittle smile, but for a moment she's all teeth and golden light that brightens the room. “I wasn't sure you'd be here.”

 

“Wasn't gonna be.”

 

He volunteers nothing else.

 

She exhales a breath. “I didn't plan to be here. I'm just..”

 

“You're just what?”

 

“He's back. _Matt_.” She spits the name out bitterly. Wraps her arms around herself as though she needs to hold onto something real. “Just strolled back in as if it hasn't been a year since we saw him last. As though he hadn't died at all, but had just been.. god, I don't even know.” Her eyes roll toward the ceiling in quiet supplication. “He seemed surprised at our reactions. It's like he thought he'd be forgiven the second he walked back through that door.”

 

Red. The goddamn Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

 

He closes his eyes. Lets out a long, elaborate, partially made-up string of curses under his breath. He hears her sharp intake of breath, the slight laugh that's coaxed from her lips, the steps she takes forward into the room when it seems as though he is not going to send her away. Wonders how much Matt Murdock would hear if he was here now. Wonders if the man has any idea what Karen Page's heart really sounds like, because to him she sounds as though it's wrapped in barbwire and bouncing against the walls of all the ways she confines herself.

 

“So you came here,” he says, lamely, opening his eyes to look at her.

 

“So I came here,” she echoes. Fidgets on the spot in a half-pivot he knows well, uncertain as she is, but stays her ground enough to look at him in turn. She lets out a breathy laugh that's anything but amused. “Sad thing is, I didn't know where else to go.”

 

“Anyone know you're gone?” He doesn't fancy a repeat of last month's string of panicked phone calls from one Trish Walker inquiring after Karen's whereabouts. “Don't want Red turning up on this doorstep.”

 

He thinks he might actually kill the man in that case. Huffs out a breath as she takes the nearest chair and curls up on it best she can. Her eyes watch him owlishly, as if she doesn't fully trust him to not do something stupid. He doesn't even trust himself.

 

“I told Foggy,” she replies. “Trish, too, because Foggy left town with Marci the second he found out Matt was.. is alive.”

 

He always thought the counselor was the smart one. Finally sees his opinion confirmed. “Did.. uh.. did Red say anythin'? 'bout where he's been?”

 

“I didn't stick around to listen.”

 

The venom in her words shouldn't surprise him. The anger that trembles through her voice shouldn't make him feel small. The loss that edges into her gaze shouldn't mean anything to him.

 

Frank Castle sits before Karen Page and feels as though he is looking into a mirror.

 

He tries to shake her best he can. Huffs out another breath and leans forward, planting his feet firmly on the ground as if they can take root enough to prevent her from blowing him away. Fixes her with a stare of his own that he's ridiculously pleased to note still makes her fidget.

 

“You doing all right?”

 

He asks it not because he wants to know, but because he wants to know how big the lies she tells herself are. He already knows she's not fine. For a moment, he wonders if that makes him the asshole again. If his incessant need to confront her and question her isn't just born out of his need to keep her demons at bay before they start interacting with his any more than they already do.

 

He wraps his arms around himself when her blue, sky blue, sea blue, marine blue eyes meet his.

 

“I'm okay,” she whispers. He's convinced she is trying to make herself believe it, because the way she hunches in on herself and the way her nails dig into her skin are decidedly not okay. He starts to shake his head at her, but she stalls him with a single look. “Really, Frank, I am.”

 

He leans back in the chair. “Okay,” he says. Doesn't believe her for a minute, but she clearly needs him to. He wavers on the next words. Almost doesn't dare speak them. Does so anyway. Plunges ahead with all the lack of tact Maria always chided him for. “Maybe you gotta let him go.”

 

“Maybe I do.”

 

*****

 

She winds up staying for a little longer than two weeks. It's always strange to him how well she fits into this small space they make for her. She makes better coffee than Micro, but they unanimously decide she should never cook again when she uses a little too much pepper in a dish. More often than not, he finds her curled up against Micro's chair and discussing sources with passion inching into her every word. She hasn't tried to clean up since the man took one look at her handiwork and abruptly left the space for half a day. (Frank knows the sentiment that lies underneath the hacker's actions, but if he starts thinking about Maria he'll be just as lost.)

 

One thing he can't fully get used to is the way she tosses and turns in her sleep. Between Micro's chronic insomnia and his own nightmares, he's not too surprised to find that the unofficial third member of their makeshift team has trouble sleeping as well. What does surprise him is how utterly disoriented she is, after, and how quick she is to lunge at him if he wakes her from her restless slumber. It takes a black eye on his part and bruised knuckles on her end before Micro suggests changing the routine.

 

It's because of this suggestion that he currently finds himself curled up under a blanket with Karen Page's hair tickling his nose and her limbs strewn over him as though he is one of her most cared-for possessions. (He doesn't think it too far from the truth, not really, not when her breath is hot on his skin and her grip on him tightens throughout the night.)

 

Micro, of course, damn him, had muttered a very quiet “not what I meant when I said getting her into a confined space would be better” when he'd caught sight of the two of them. Sometimes, Frank's convinced the man keeps him alive only to set him up for disaster. He has half a mind to punch the hacker next time he delivers a clever suggestion, even when he thinks this idea may not have been an altogether poor one.

 

“You okay?”

 

He blinks at her soft question. Almost smiles when he realises he's asked her the same thing half a dozen times since that night in the woods. He's all but given up on keeping her at a respectable distance. Judging by the way she buries herself in a dead man's arms, she has given up on the same where he's concerned.

 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, careful to keep his voice low now that Micro's finally fallen asleep in his chair. “You?”

 

She makes a noise of assent in the back of her throat. “Feels weird, doesn't it? This.” She gestures at them, wedged between filing cabinet and wall as they are, and her cheeks almost flush with reds and pinks. “I mean..”

 

“I know. It does.”

 

“Not bad though.”

 

Her words hover in the air between them before he makes them land by squeezing her just a little more closely to his chest. “Not bad,” he affirms. Thinks Karen Page may be more peace than he deserves to have. “Keeps most of the nightmares out. Makes them smaller.”

 

She shifts in his arms for a moment. He knows she wants the nightmares. Wants the terror of them to always be a presence in her brain somehow, as though they can stop her from doing worse things in waking life. Knows she thinks she deserves every moment, even when she wakes screaming and he's sat up with her at least once as she puked her guts out following a bad one.

 

Demons lurk at the edge of his vision for a moment, begging him to allow his darkness to choke him out and swallow him whole. He ignores the ones that bear Red's face most of all. He's still scared Karen is going to drown out Maria if he lets her exist in this space for even a minute longer, but he woke tonight to the sound of Maria's dying breaths and his own screams from long ago. Thinks he's got nothing to fear when one woman claims the man he used to be and one woman exists in the same space as the man he's become.

 

“I should go soon.” She murmurs it out into the small space they occupy. The words hang precariously in the air for a moment before he winds his arms even tighter around her. He dares to be selfish in the dark. Dares be her comfort, here, now, as her hand curls around his shirt and her hair brushes across his bare arm. She breathes soft words against the skin on his neck. “Get back to the land of the living.”

 

His mouth quirks into half a smile at that. “That will put a wrench in Micro's plans. I think he means to adopt you.” He's only half-joking, having caught the man affectionately ruffling Karen's hair yesterday and calling her a 'good kid' despite their rather small age difference. His own throat goes dry at the thought of her walking back out the door. “You'll keep in touch.”

 

She must have noticed he's not asking. Must have noticed that his voice dropped and his body tensed up. He thinks he likes her just a little bit more for not commenting on any of that. Instead, she simply sounds reassuring. “I'll check in. Expect a shitstorm when my new article hits the streets.” He can almost hear the smug pride lurk in her words before she turns wistful. “I may need the safety of this again before long.”

 

He tells himself she simply means Micro's hideout by 'this', even when she sighs out a breath and shifts in his arms until her hair fans out over his chest and her long legs tangle around his. He is nobody's safe haven. He keeps telling himself this, no matter how much it feels like she may disagree and argue with him if she knew all the thoughts running through his brain. He tells himself this is only for now.

 

He can't let it be anything else. He can't expect this to be here when he wakes. He has not been safe in a long time. He can't be safe for her.

 

A niggling voice in the back of his head tells him maybe her idea of safe is not the same as his.

 

“I wish I didn't have to go.”

 

If he was a braver man, he would tell her she doesn't have to. Instead, he settles on half a truth. Selfishly pulls her close and murmurs it into her hair. Wills the words to be lost to the night that draws tighter around them.

 

“You don't have to go tonight.”

 

“No,” she agrees, resting her head against his beating heart, “not tonight.”

 


End file.
